1. Do you Track my Traffic?

No, we don't. SafeDNS is not an Internet Service Provider and does not have access to your internet traffic. We don't know which URLs/pages you visit, because we can see only domain names requested by DNS protocol.

Consequently, we don't have any possibility or desire to collect such data as passwords or private messages.You can learn about our Privacy Policy.

2. Why Should I Register a SafeDNS Account?

After you've created a SafeDNS account, you will be able to choose which website categories you want to block. It will also give you the ability to manage your own blacklists and whitelists of websites, and use other advanced features of our service.

You can use SafeDNS without a personal account, but in this case you will only get protection from the most dangerous malware and phishing sites.

It is not necessary to have an account, if you use our service like an ordinary DNS service. This method can be used if your provider's DNS servers are overloaded, periodically crash or if their operation is unstable.

3. Do I Have to Install any Program on my Computer?

No, to use our service you don't have to install any software on your computer. The service can be set either on your computer or on your router, or server, or mobile device (tablet or phone).

For your convenience we have a program called SafeDNS Agent for Windows which can be installed on your computer. It helps to use our service in the NATed network or in case if you move with your computer, from the one network to another. This piece of software also has some special features like binding filtering profiles with different computer users.

4. What Should I Do if some Websites are not Blocked?

There are two things to be done for proper SafeDNS work.

Firstly, you should create an account onourwebsite. Go to the Web Filtering tab and mark all the categories you want to be blocked.Secondly, set the connection with our filtering service. If you use Windows OS, you can download and install SafeDNS Agent from the dashboard. The Agent will enable all necessary settings on your computer.

If you use another operating system or you want to set the service on a router or server, you should set the proper network settings according to the instructions. Settings are simple and can be applied in less than 5 minutes.

If you have completed both steps, but the filtering is still not working, please contact our support team.Please note, that users behind transparent proxies, should enable the special option of the block page for proper service functioning. This option is available on all paid plans.

5. How Can I Stop Using your Service?

To stop SafeDNS filtering, you should return the network settings on your computer to the original settings provided by ISP or your network administrator.

If you have installed the SafeDNS Agent you need to uninstall it. After that, your network settings will be automatically restored to the initial settings.

In order to manually change your DNS server address in Windows OS to the original one, open the network settings dialog box and either tick 'Obtain DNS server address automatically' if your ISP supports it or insert DNS addresses provided by your ISP.

6. Why do I have sites blocked by your service despite not being signed up for your filtering?

If you are not registered in our service and encounter some websites blocked by our service, contact your service provider, administrator or parents for clarification and gaining access to these websites.

SafeDNS filtering can be functioning at public Wi-Fi hotspots. Once you connected to any of such hotspots the information about blocked websites will be stored in the cache of your browser.

It is recommended to clear the cache after using a public Wi-Fi hotspot protected by SafeDNS. It will unblock access to blocked websites.

7. How do I remove the block from my favorite website?

If you use our service at home and you have an account at SafeDNS.com then you can change the filtering rules through the dashboard or SafeDNS Agent.

In other cases you should contact the person who has set up our service (internet service provider, network administrator, parents, etc.).

8. Why are sites from allowed categories blocked?

There probably is some misconfiguration in the settings of your IP address. The common error is binding a dynamic IP address as static. In this case, the settings of other user can be applied to you.

You should set the correct IP address in the dashboard or use SafeDNS Agent.

9. How can I report a harmful website or incorrect categorization?

10. Can I setup your service on my router?

Yes, you can setup our filtering service on your router. All you need to do is set our DNS server address in the network settings of your router and attach the public static IP address of the router to our dashboard.

If your router has a public dynamic IP address, use this guide for service setup.

If your router has a public dynamic IP address and has a DynDNS-compatible client (all DD-WRT/OpenWRT based routers have it), follow this guide instead.

11. Can I make different filtering rules for different computers or users in my local network?

If you use Windows OS on your computers, then you can install SafeDNS Agent and select which filtering profile to use on a specific computer or for specific user. Other computers and devices will be filtered according to settings of the whole network, router or server.

12. The filtering is not working.

Some ISPs or companies can block alternate DNS servers in their networks. In this case our service may be unavailable. To make it work, you should unblock access to alternate DNS servers via your ISP or network administrator.

13. The filtering is working from time to time.

Such a situation can arise in the following cases:

You haven't removed DNS server address of your ISP from the network settings. Part of the DNS requests can be processed by the DNS server of your ISP which doesn't have any filtering features. To fix the problem, remove all additional DNS servers from your network settings.

Your computer supports IPv6 protocol and is configured to obtain DNS servers automatically for the IPv6 protocol. To fix it you need to disable automatic obtaining of DNS server addresses in the network settings.

You've entered your external IP address in our dashboard as static address, while it is dynamic. In this case our system can't identify your computer/router when the next change of the dynamic address occurs. To solve the problem you can install SafeDNS Agent or enter your external address as a dynamic DNS hostname following our instructions.

14. I've added youtube.com, facebook.com, skype.com or other site in the white list, but the site is showing incorrectly or the service (i.e. skype) isn't working.

Many websites use several domains and/or hostnames (subsites) to improve the speed of loading. You should consider it when you're adding some websites to blacklist or whitelist.Therefore, if you have blocked the category, but want to have access to some website from the blocked category, you should include all subsites of this website on the whitelist.

To find the list of subsites of a website you can use a development console in your web browser.

Here are the examples of subsites for some popular websites that you should add to the whitelist while the main category for these sites or services is blocked. Please note, that sites' owners can change these addresses from time to time.

Youtube Subsites:

youtube.com (without www)

ytimg.com

googlevideo.com

Facebook Subsites:

facebook.com (without www)

facebook.net

fbcdn.net

Skype Subsites:

skype.com (without www)

trouter.io

skype.net

skypeassets.com

messenger.live.com

WhatsApp Subsites:

whatsapp.com

whatsapp.net

Twitter Subsites:

twitter.com (without www)

twimg.com

t.co

Instagram Substitutes:

instagram.com

cdninstagram.com

Hamachi Subsites:

hamachi.cc

logmein-gateway.com

logmein.com

15. I've changed my filtering settings but nothing changed.

The change of settings is applied to our filtering servers in a couple of minutes. Sometimes there will be no visible change in he filtering of prohibited websites. If after 5 minutes, don't see the changes you should make additional checks.

If you have recently visited the website that you want to block, then there can be outdated information in the cache of your browser, DNS cache of operating system, DNS cache of router and so on. Such outdated information can prevent your computer to block access to prohibited websites.

In most cases restart of the browser fixes the problem.

If after restarting the browser there are no changes, you should clear the DNS cache of your operating system.You can do this on Windows OS with the command ipconfig /flushdns.In uncommon cases, you need to clear the DNS cache of your router or proxy, if you have any.

16. I've added website to the whitelist but it is still blocked.

A message such as 'The website is still blocked' is shown in cases when our system points you to the original website, but your browser on the basis of cached information points you to the address of the block page. Also this can happen in the case of proxy server use.

To fix this issue, you should restart the browser or clear its cache. In the majority of cases this will be enough.

If after restarting the browser, there are no changes, you should clear the DNS cache of your operating system.You can do this on Windows OS with the command ipconfig /flushdns.In uncommon cases you may need to clear the DNS cache of your router or proxy, if you have any.

If you are a corporate user, then the message 'The website is still blocked' may be shown in the case of DNS requests originating from one IP address and HTTP requests have other origin IP address, that is not attached to your settings in our service. In such cases, our service can't correctly identify you. To fix it, you should attach all your IP addresses to the same filtering profile in our dashboard.

17. Internet connection is interrupted after SafeDNS Agent installation or after I have manually set your DNSes.

This means that your ISP or network administrator blocks access to alternate DNS servers. You should contact your ISP or network administrator to get access to alternate DNSes.

18. The filtering stopped working after I've changed DNS set by SafeDNS Agent in network settings from 127.0.0.1 to another address.

When you use SafeDNS Agent the DNS address in the network settings should be set to 127.0.0.1. If you have manually changed the DNS address then you should return it to 127.0.0.1 or reinstall SafeDNS Agent.

19. Does SafeDNS work with the proxy servers?

Yes, we work with the proxy servers. You should configure the proxy server to use DNSes of SafeDNS. Set addresses of our DNS servers in the settings of your proxy server. If the proxy server uses the settings of the operating system then you should set our DNSes in your system. After this you should bind your external IP address in our dashboard.

If you use Squid then you should set our DNS servers in the system settings of set parameter dns_nameservers in the Squid configuration.

If you use Windows-base proxy server then you can install SafeDNS Agent and the proxy server on the same host. In such configuration, configure the proxy server to use DNS 127.0.0.1.

20. Does SafeDNS work with Active Directory?

Yes, it does. You should configure DNS Server on your Windows server to use our DNS servers as external resolvers. After that you should bind external IP address of your server in our dashboard.